A Two-Placed Heart: A Memoir in Verse
by Doan Phuong Nguyen
Intermediate, Middle School    Tu/Lee & Low    352 pp.
9/24    9781643796420    $24.95

In this fictionalized memoir in verse set in 1991, Bom both envies and resents her younger sister Bo’s ignorance about their life in Vietnam, before their family immigrated to the United States as refugees five years earlier. Whereas Bo seems comfortably American in their Nashville home, Bom feels torn between two places and cultures. Worse, she worries that she and her sister will forget where they came from. To combat that loss, Bom uses her father’s typewriter to compose poems filled with memories and family stories. Nguyen’s narrative moves smoothly between Bom’s past and present, between Vietnam and the U.S. She depicts a childhood in Vietnam filled with love, family, and community despite the shadows cast by war, political persecution, and poverty. By contrast, the U.S. is foreign and alienating to Bom, who faces racist and xenophobic bullying at school. Nguyen employs evocative language to give voice to Bom’s feelings: “I am like a fish on land / thirsting for the water, / with the shoreline out of reach.” Spacing and line-formatting choices also emphasize thematic elements such as the weight of psychological distance and the transience of memory. The first-person narration and direct address in the poems create an intimacy between narrator and reader, with the tone varying from explanatory to vulnerable by turns. A heartfelt story about identity and heritage refracted through the lens of a complex sibling relationship. Front matter includes a glossary and a family tree; an author’s note is appended.

From the ">November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.